Apple App: week 2

Looking for a setting for my game I decided upon using disasters as a setting. That would then explain how the player can control the enviroment, if the enviroment is already falling apart. So I looked at disaster films including The Poseidon Adventure, Towering Inferno and Armegeddon. The idea forming that the main character would be someone trying to escape these situations and needing the player to control the enviroment to let him through.

Ideas for ways that controlling the enviroment could work: Tilting the screen allowing a suspended platform to swing over to the character's position for him to run onto then tilting it over to the other side of a chasm or something to allow the character to cross.
Tilting the screen to allow water to overflow a container to put out a fire
Shaking the screen to cause a wall to crumble and fall.

It occured to me that this could turn into a puzzle game with the player trying to figure out what could be done to bypass obstacles. I though if that was added to the side-scrolling platforming idea then you would end up with a very frantic timed puzzle platformer. This would make it more necessary to allow the player limited control over the main character. A stop/start button perhaps as well as a jump command. However I didnt want to cover the screen in buttons as the smaller Apple Platforms already have fairly small screens.
But due to the screen being touch sensitive the entire screen could be divided into invisible "sections" that act as buttons. This is used in the app Star Wars Trench Run and it works well. This means the player can keep the screen clear, letting him see more of the action and without the controls being limited to "button areas" but instead being an entire section of the screen it would be easier to make snap jumps as the player wont have to be accurate when using his thumb.
But with the inclusion of the pause to allow for puzzle solving there is a chance to increase difficulty by removing the pause button meaning the game can have two levels of difficulty adding to replayability.

Another thought occured to me, if the player had more control over the character, say movement as well as jumping, then it could be possible to make the game have a versus multiplayer. One player playing the character having to get from point A to point B in this disaster area and the other player controlling the enviroment, using the tilt controls to cause scenery to topple and fall and the touch screen to direct lightning or other disasters.
This could work as the Apple Platforms do allow for wireless multiplayer. However controlling the player character would go against the main idea behind the game and would be a completely different experience from singleplayer. I believe if the mulitplayer experience is completely different from the single player experience then that will cause frustration for the player as none of his skills acquired playing singleplayer would be applicable to the multiplayer game.